Noughts Crosses Malorie Blackman Essay

...﻿Noughts and Crosses by MalorieBlackmanNoughts and Crosses is an amazing novel written by MalorieBlackman, about a world that is divided in two, the dark skinned crosses and the light skinned noughts. Crosses are the most privileged race and are the rulers, noughts are slaves to the crosses and are second class citizens that are treated very poorly, quite a lot like what’s happening in our world today but if the race and class were switched. Sephy is one of the main characters, she is a cross and a daughter to Kamal Hadley, who is very powerful and has a lot of control over the world. Callum is a nought, a son of Maggie McGregor, which is Sephy’s nanny. Their close childhood friendship slowly turns into love, and becomes stronger the older they get. I was amazed and happy that Sephy and Callum continued to secretly see each other even after Maggie lost her job as Sephy’s nanny, and even though they were forced to lie and make up excuses so they could meet each day, I think it’s incredible how much they would do for each other, no matter how difficult it is, and this shows me to be dedicated and have trust in others even when things are tough, but this can also show that most secrets cannot last forever and sometimes they may need to be told for the best. In the novel,...

Noughts and Crosses- Malorie Blackman The book Noughts and Crosses is a sitting on the fence sort of book for me. The writing of it hooked you in and made you think but I absolutely hated what happened in the end. The plot was good but as I said I didn’t like some things that occurred during the novel, like the fact Callum dying made me want to scream and rip my hair out (I did restrain myself by the way). But the fact that I did want to do that was because you grew attached to the characters, as if they were real people. Even if they’re not, they could be in the future, you never know… ) I hated/ loved that about the book. My favourite characters would have to be the guys of Callum’s family, especially Callum. Partly because of his complete ‘it is how it is’ attitude and his loyalty. Even though most people probably hated Jude, I quite liked him. He had a tough attitude, but really he was quite vulnerable, especially at the end when he’s pretty much lost all his family because of the Crosses.

I also held quite a fair bit of respect (for a book character anyway) for Ryan, Callum’s dad. His courage for taking the consequences of Jude’s slight slip up, originally resulting in him going to the gallows to hang. Even though he ended up not hanging he walked up to the gallows expecting death. And not backing down from it; accepting death so his family could live. I didn’t like Sephy particularly; in fact I hated her to be honest.

I didn’t like the choices that she made; choosing the baby over Callum. I most certainly disliked her parents, most of all her father. But I started to tolerate her mother near the end when you find out she paid for the lawyer to help Ryan. My favourite scene would have to be…. I actually don’t have a favourite scene, lol… The setting of the book was based sometime in the future; it hasn’t happened and is a possibility, who knows, it could happen (shudder). I think the book was targeted at teens.

I also think that Malorie Blackman swapped the places of the people in charge so people would feel or imagine what it would be like if we were in their place, seeing as one of the main themes was racism. A few other themes were sacrifice, love and friendship and another main one,-death. Sacrifice and death made a big part of this book, constantly having to choose between love, family, religion and your race. It was a massive balancing act for the two main characters, Sephy and

Callum, who you got to study in depth of how they thought and what choices they always had to make as they were constantly switching between characters’ point of views; that’s how the book was written, in points of view. I think this book inspires a whole pile of ‘what if? ’ questions; it’s not too hard to imagine how much our lives would be different, and not by a little. I think she’s really trying to make us look deeper into the racism that surrounds this book. Even though it is made up, the more you think about it, the possibility of it happening is actually quite possible, scarily enough. Arianna Hogan